The big picture is the right place to start. The world is comprised of hundreds of nations whose governments range from non-existent to dictatorships, from anything goes to nothing goes unless the government OK’s it. And to add to the mix–governments and their leaderships change constantly. Some of the leaders choose to expand their domain by attacking other lesser-defendable countries for economic, strategic, self-satisfying or other reasons. History lists these conflicts (wars) going back thousands of years. Caesar, Alexander, Charlemagne, Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini, and many others have shown the world the cost of conflict. Even in America, we fought the Civil War. It’s all about balance and the peace we find so elusive. Fast forward to Russia-Ukraine today. After World War II nations banded together to form NATO to try to formalize a process to peace and minimize conflict between nations. When Putin decided to invade Ukraine he trashed that concept entirely. As NATO nations circled the wagons the call for help was an immediate reaction. The US initially joined with our European brothers to provide financial, material and moral support to Ukraine. But then the second round of funding was blocked temporarily by our internal political chaos. While the pols debated and Ukraine begged, we hesitated. We–for a time–forgot what a ruthless dictator, if left unchecked, could do to a democracy. The NATO pledge was set aside–not because we agreed with Putin but because we fought with each other. The world balance mentioned above is a fragile commodity–past wars have shown us that Hitler didn’t stop with Poland, Napoleon didn’t stop after one conquest, Alexander ruled almost all of the then-known world. The point: giving in to a bully nation does not satisfy that nation’s hunger. In fact, giving in only encourages more invasions, death and destruction. Look at World War II. Hitler’s foolish attempt to acquire Russia was his downfall. But up to that time he had all of Europe under his command. Bottom line: as unpleasant as funding a neighbor is against an attack, it is the “good neighbor policy” we cannot ignore without eventually jeopardizing our own democracy. We should be thankful that the funding was eventually approved.
Comments are closed